Post #12: Week of Oct. 10 to 16

 The GOP: You'll remember I marked Peak Trump at the end of August, about six weeks ago. I also noted he was still in first place comfortably.

Well, his stock is rising again.

The correlation isn't perfect, but his bump in the road appears to have been the now cooling carcass of Carly Fiorina. As she rose, she took votes from him and as she falls, his numbers get better.

The press took a closer look at Fiorina and it didn't go well for her. The press is still reticent to look at Trump seriously. He got in bed with the New York mob to build Trump Towers out of concrete instead of the standard steel and glass of the era. Trump University, now defunct, is being investigated as a scam. He's an Obama birther and an anti-vaxx truther, two positions that fly in the face of all serious evidence.

What can take the bloom off this flower growing in the crap? It's very hard to say. As my friend the history teacher says, Trump is the id, and she's not the only one to put it this way. His followers love that he says what they wish they could say, but people who are serious about politics realize his attacks are not ideologically stable. It fascinating that he now attacks JeBush Bush with George W.'s record, blaming him for the attacks on 9/11, which is usually only the claim of far left wing voices, and of invading Iraq using false intelligence, a claim that no serious person outside the GOP can dispute. It's interesting to watch diehard neocons and online conservatives try to take Trump down. The most common insult is calling his "Bill Clinton's friend".

Dudes, I don't think that is going to work.

 Non-Politicians vs. Politicians in the GOP: I've been talking about the share of the people who favor the non-politicians compared to the politicians for a few weeks now, but this week I got the brainstorm to actually show it in a chart.

In early October, Carly Fiorina was a big part of this number, but this week she slipped below Ted Cruz into sixth place. I can't say that this means she will soon be fighting with Rand Paul and Mike Huckabee for whatever scraps the media throw her, but I wasn't impressed with her time in the spotlight, though I fully admit to not being the target market.

I make no claim to knowing when this demonstration of anger ends. The fact the battle for leadership of the House wasn't just a little one weekend show of pique shows us this fire is nowhere near 50% contained.

The Dems: Hillary's numbers are going up, Bernie is staying about level as is None of the Above and the Average of Others is sliding. Clever people will probably figure out the reason.

We reached Peak Biden a few weeks ago.

This week's polls should not be seen as a referendum on the debate just yet. About half the polls were taken before and half after. Next week's polls and the week after will give us a better idea.

Stay tuned.